


Lift

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fear, Fix-it (eventually), Gen, Pain, stream of consciousness writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-26 22:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13867575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian's struggle to get to the top of the tower at Scarif.Jyn's struggle on the way down.Bodhi's struggle to get the survivors out in time.





	1. Lift going up

Falling, with the cascading agony of a blaster hit ripping and rippling through him; falling in pain and horror and he’s failed, he’s fallen, he won’t be there to complete the mission and he’s betraying the final trust he’d sworn faith to.  A thousand thoughts coursing, falling through air slow as magic; thoughts that rush, that fly up borne like tinder on the heat of pain.  The first girder hits.  Square across the upper back.  He feels things break and give inside, a sickening crunch and smash, all the air thrown out of his lungs before he can scream, the gun thrown out of a hand momentarily numb, nerves overloading.  Instinct pushes the other hand to claw for the metal as he bounces off it –

\- _bounces.  Like a puppet a toy a corpse_

But it’s impossible to grab hold and he’s falling again, hitting something else, more pain, more tearing of things that should not be torn, rending through the pain that was already there; more snapping and wrenching inside, his hands insubstantial as flimsy-paper, a weak flailing failure of fingers clutching steely air, and he’s falling, he’s failed, the mission the team the rebellion Jyn _Jyn **Jyn**_ he’s failed he’s dead, and it’s a long way down.  He’s dead, he’s a dead man, falling.  Jyn, Jyn, Jyn -

A voice shouting his name, hoarse with pain, shock, fear; his racing mind catalogues the nuances and names the sound; Jyn crying out to him in despair.  He wants to cry back, he has to draw breath -

\- _Keep climbing, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve failed you_

Slam.

Darkness.

..

It isn’t death.  Not death after all.  Because he’s conscious again.  Not.  Dead.  Yet.  _Not dead yet_ _I think…_

But every breath feels as though it is; death in his bones, death in his lungs, sucking backwards, tightening like bladed wires, ballooning in firework bursts.  _All over.  I am alive but_

\- Numb

\- In pain

\- And numb, and in pain, and numb, and pain.  Dying.  _I must be dying if I’m not dead._ Broken.  Numbness and then pain.  Broken –

\- The first sound he hears that he is certain is not inside him, not just the inner fleshly catch and rip of his own ribcage pulling against itself on each inhalation, is the wind.  It hisses up the vast channel of the tower.  A monster’s breath, panting, desiccating the air.

The second, the only other sound, his own breath wheezing in pain, sucking in still, despite the agony, despite the broken bellows of ribs and lungs crushed, air leaking out, blood leaking in.

Broken.  _What is broken?  Am I not dead?  I’m not dead.  Think. **Think!**_

He gasps in a deeper breath, breathing into the pain, trying to float his mind on it; breathes, and shifts his right arm.  _Yes.  Movement, yes._   Fingers clench down, griping on sharp steel edges.  A new pain, clarifying, locating, specific.   _I am here.  I’m lying on something – metal, flat, cold, ridged, unsteady.  Lying in the monster howl of the wind.  I’m a lump of pain jammed in a steel throat.  I’m breathing.  I’m moving._

_Conscious, not dead._

Perhaps not dying.  Yet.

_Think!_

_Where – how – I am – I was_

\- climbing

\- shooting

\- protecting

\- fighting for

The mission.  Jyn.  The mission.

_Jyn._

The image of Jyn above him, still climbing, hits like a thunderbolt and he tries to sit up.

Agony agony agony _sweet Force alive I can’t I can’t_

_I was climbing.  I told her to keep climbing.  We needed to_

\- keep climbing

\- she would keep climbing she would have kept on

_\- I must climb too, keep climbing, must keep climbing_

He’s giddy and sick, panting, can’t breathe, choking on air as though impaled inside his own body.

Jyn.  The mission.  Jyn.

_How long have I been out?  Think.  Concussion.  Blurred vision.  Broken – what? - ribs, certainly ribs -_

He pushes upwards again and a weak scream forces itself out as every bone seems to be twisting in its site and tearing at the flesh around it

_\- ribs, yes, several ribs, several places, yes, not good but_

Still breathing.  Just.

_\- spine, something’s wrong there, pain down my left leg, and shoulders, head, side, hip, knees, left arm –but I am moving, that’s a leg moving, and now the other leg, I’m mobile.  Not dead yet._

\- giddy, shaking.   _Force alive, Force alive, I am alive_

“Gah, ah, uh, ahhhh!”

_I have to_

_\- climb_

_\- have to climb, have to, have to_

**Climb.**  

A ghost voice, jerking, vocalisers breaking down.  Where is this voice, how does it echo so loud, cut through the gale, cut into his skull, imperative, stronger than life or death, how –

He peers into the fogged field of vision, blinking, aching.  Concussion.  _Think, Cassian.  Think!_  

 **Climb**.

_\- It’s not possible, you can’t be here, I heard you die_

_\- oh my friend_

_\- oh my dear friend_

  **Climb.  Climb!  You can still send the plans to the fleet.**

In his mind.  Of course.  And telling the truth, as always.  Somehow, somehow, he has to get up and go up.  To climb.

Jyn.  The mission.  Jyn.  _Have to climb._

_\- How?_

_\- I can’t climb_

There.  In the glare, in the blur of walls around him, a rectangle.  A row of lights brighter than the rest.  When he blinks and stares, propped on his shaking, screaming forearms, it swings into focus and out again, swaying as he sways.  An elevator door hatch, and indicator lights working.

When he looks down, everything falls.  When he looks up, the same.  When he tries to move, everything hurts; and when he gives up and slumps to the steel again, the same.  It could almost be comical -

\- he’s concussed

\- he’s wounded

\- he’s broken dying failed failed failed

\- in so much pain

\- and he has to get to that door.

Miraculously, the blaster is lying between him and the wall.  He puts out a screaming hand and grips hold of it; begins to drag himself to the side of the shaft, to the doorframe; to fumbling for handholds, wrenching himself up enough that he can hit the call button.  Nerves shoot with agony all over his body, and he imagines overlapping rings of pain radiating out from every damaged joint, every fracture and burn and bruise.

_\- Keep moving, keep moving_

_-Jyn and the mission, the mission and Jyn_

In the midst of whistling wind and howling pain the mechanical _ching_ of the elevator arriving is alien and bright.  The door slides open, impervious to having been summoned by a wreck lying almost prone on the service gantry.  A wreck who hauls himself forward painfully, up to the doorsill, over the raised lip, legs scrabbling weakly for a purchase.  Who bites back a scream as the automated closing mechanism brings the door gliding back to strike him in the midriff.  It bounces away from the obstacle, and he lies panting, searching for the strength to drag his body the rest of the way in.

Pushes himself the last few feet, right inside, and slumps for a moment, groaning.  The blithe door slides shut with another musical note.

Jyn and the mission; the two goals move like equals in his mind, wave following wave inseparably across the sea, threads of melody and bass-line each vital to the other.  She must have gone to the very top, to the transmitter dish and the emergency access port.  He has to go up.  For her, for their mission.

He braces his good arm on the floor and strains up, swiping at the control panel, but the button for the top storey is out of reach.   Cassian sweats, moans; claws the wall, hunting for enough leverage to get to his feet.  To go up, he has to get up.  Go up, get up.

_\- upright_

_\- have to have to **must**_

There was a training session once, techniques for withstanding torture.  Auto-trance, controlled breathing, dissociation, abstracted focus -

_\- Breathe, and see Jyn_

_\- Breathe, and see the mission successful_

_\- Breathe, and see hope.  Focus on hope, focus on_

_\- the free peoples_

_\- the Empire weakened, pushed back, gone_

_\- their weapon never used again_

_\- that poor dead man rehabilitated, the galaxy to know Erso fought back the only way he could_

_\- justice done in the memory of all their numberless victims_

_\- all the sacrifices finally worthwhile_

_\- the Empire gone, gone, gone_

_\- hope in every pair of eyes I have ever loved_

_\- hope in Jyn’s eyes_

And somehow he’s standing. 

The light of her is a fuel burning inside him.  It would be tragic, if it were not the one thing driving his broken body to keep moving.  That face, in his mind; those ocean-clear eyes looking up at his.  Her anger, her courage, her refusal, her trust given and lost, and regained, regained.  Her hope, relying now on him.

He finds the button, presses a bloody fingertip to it and leans in till it connects.  He cannot betray her.  Not Jyn, the centre of his world; not Jyn, the focussed heart, so often betrayed.  She is the one who he will stand by though it kills him. 

It would be tragic.  Comical.  Wonderful and terrifying.  Now of all times, at these most desperate straits, to recognise this.  This other fall.  He had to fall in order to see it and –

_\- I would choose now of all times to fall for someone, ah yes, good work, Andor_

The lift goes up, smoothly, carrying him to whatever is to be found there - and please, and please, he prays, wordless and incoherent, please, Jyn and the mission, please…  The adrenalin rush of fighting through the pain peaks, finally, and Cassian knows.  These broken bones, these bleeding lungs, without medical help, and soon, very soon, these will kill him.  He’s going to die for her.

_\- So, then; now to die well.  As I have not lived.  Now to die for a mission that will save lives, after taking so many.  A killing for all the killings I’ve done, a death for the deaths I’ve caused, but a death to some worth, and that is more than I ever looked for.  Now.  Now.  Now._

_\- Rip the air into yourself.  Breath by bloody breath.  Stay upright.  Now.  Stay –_

But he’s sinking against the side of the elevator, slumping on the cold metal.  If he lets himself fall again he will not be able to rise.  He must stay alive, stay upright, a few minutes more.  Drive on, towards whatever lies waiting, stay alive with willpower and fire and

_\- pain oh Force oh **Force** oh gods of my forefathers oh pain -_

There’s something seriously wrong with his left leg, wrong and getting steadily worse, a knife slicing down from the middle of his back through to the ball of his foot, pain flaring out into each toe, distinct, precise, his own spine the torturer; hips and knee starting to stiffen and go numb, quadriceps spasming –

\- looked at rationally I have an hour, maybe two at most

\- to

\- to spend on what is precious

\- precious to me

The elevator halts and the door slides open, and the bright _ping_ is lost in the roar of distant cannon-fire from a dogfight half a klick away.  He sees smoke, smells burning.  Heaves himself off the wall and takes one shuffling step, and another

_\- over the sill_

_\- stay upright_

_\- stay conscious_

_\- look look find her what can you see what can you -_

Jyn.

The man in white – _him, **him!**_

\- a blaster aimed at her heart

\- her face, utterly defiant, resolute, facing death down

\- alive.  Jyn Jyn Jyn

Somehow he finds the strength to focus, and silences his last few lurching steps to the pillar.  Slumps against it, swings up the gun, braces it and fires.  No time to think and not enough adrenalin left to aim well.  But he hits the target.

\- shoulder blow.  Good enough.  Target down.

Jyn moving forward, released like a prisoner and running, limping but running, slamming the transmission lever; and her tense face opening in joy as she turns.

He’s done enough.  She’s saved the mission.  He breathes out a smile.  It’s over now, it ends

\- it ends

\- her face in joy

\- in joy, in joy, in joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've read some wonderful stories where he does climb; but this is my headcanon.


	2. Lift going down

“Transmitting.”

Jyn knows the emotions, recognises them when she feels them.  Success, joy, justification.  Relief.  There have been brief moments of each in her life, enough for her to understand this moment, this surge of victorious brightness.  The indicator lights flick up one by one till the whole transmission is done, and this is a thousand times higher and more sweet than any triumph she’s known.  They did it, they did it, every force that has lined up to stop them has failed and **they did it**.

And he’s still alive.  Alive, and with her, here in this highest moment.

When she runs to him she wants to rejoice, to laugh, cheer, throw her arms around him.  The last time she was this glad she didn’t know what gladness meant; she was a child basking in her parents’ reflected relief as they swung her between them at the edge of a field, when their first crops had sprouted and no-one had found them yet, on Lah’mu.  The day their fear turned to green new life, for a few brief months. 

She reaches Cassian wanting him to catch her up in his arms, to drop his blaster and hold her, gather her in, swing her like a child.  There’s nothing now to stop him from smiling at her, laughing with her; he’s here to share the joy, the triumph, because they made it, they made it.

She reaches him; and he’s barely upright.  His outstretched arms, gun hand braced in desperation, are shaking.  There’s blood on his face, bruises purpling on every bit of visible skin; he leans crooked as if even supporting himself hurts.  He’s restored to her and to life, but this isn’t Cassian miraculously unhurt, this is a man terribly, terribly hurt, holding on to his last fight with clenched hands.  Breathing fast, shallow, hard, carving a last few minutes of strength out of agony.

A roar rises silent inside her, hate rage grief, an explosion, a tidal wave.  She shakes her head, trying to find somewhere to put her pain, her _fury_ ; and sees the man in white.  It was _him_ who did this, tearing the heart out of another good man, another life she loves destroyed by that monster, she cannot, cannot let him lie peaceful when he has wounded and shattered and _taken **everything**_ –

She’s barely aware of lunging, only of the red wave of hate rising in her, powering her movement, she’s going to kill _kill **kill** him she’s going to kill _

and then, the hand on her arm, gripping and shaking as it grips; Cassian’s last strength pulling her back, the iron gentleness of his voice saying “Leave it, leave it –“

It.  Not him. _**It**._

It doesn’t deserve to rest even if it’s dead, it ought to fall, fall, fall like her mother like her father like Saw and the million innocents of Jedha, like K2 like Cassian, it ought to fall to dust, she wants to see it **fall**

But Cassian is alive and stronger than the last hatred in her and he

\- tugs her back

\- so gentle

\- into the warmth of his body, into

\- a tiny flinch, a silent huff of pain, and he’s holding her

His harsh uneven breathing is warm on her cheekbone, lips almost touching her skin, and something bumps against her temple – the end of his nose, undignified and so real and alive; and there’s so much warmth in his voice saying again “Leave it” and then “let’s go –“

And she lets go.

Something opens in Jyn, and she looks into that opening and sees there is a future there.  This – this task, this day, this fate – is over.  They did it, and it’s over; and there’s still life, past that completion.  She’s reached the place she’s never imagined, an open ending, where there was always just another end to strive for.  A space beyond _stay alive, find a meal, keep your head down_ , beyond _slice it and steal it and get away_. 

All the years she’s striven for her own survival, striven to gain just enough to reach the next chance; and now there’s no more striving; just a blank, limitless, a place where anything could go, anything could happen.  The transmission was sent, the mission completed, won, done.  It’s astonishing, blinding; they could **live** and do things they choose, no more orders they could **choose** –

There is possibility in the world, again, possibility and hope.  They could find new ways to fight, new ways to help, they could learn to be more than they’ve been in the whole of these short, chopped, shuttered lives.

Her eyes close for a second on the shock of it, the enormity of seeing.  The pain, the aching battered limbs and the bruises and broken places outside her and within, all clamour at her; but she’s still standing.  Her mission – their mission - done.  She opens her eyes again, onto the platform, the dust and smoke and broken sunlight in the air.  The transmitter, with the white indicator bars of completion lit.  The blood and dirt on Cassian’s shirt, on his face and her own outstretched hands. 

Behind him, the shut steel doors of a service elevator, glinting in the improbable light.  Doors; a way out, off this platform.  A way to get to whatever chance is left to them, below. 

They could be so many things, in this future where there’s no one fixed end, only the branching roads of hope. 

They’ll get in that elevator and get out of this place, and find a way home.  It can happen.

She had wanted Cassian to take her in his arms and lift her; but now it’s she who takes him and supports him instead. 

She embraces a body that feels broken under her hands. 

He subsides onto her with a grunt and a slackening of strain; gasps with every step as she helps him move.  When she presses herself close and holds him, the side of his ribcage gives against her, wrongly, twistingly, something caving that should be firm; his ribs don’t hold and when she touches his belly he winces, and there’s a hardness where the flesh should be soft, a nightmarish parallel to the _give_ in places that should be solid.  The arm she hauls over her shoulders goes limp and his hand falls weakly against her collarbone.  He gasps and gasps, every breath seems to come harder.  But when she raises her head to look him in the eye he is smiling like a man who’s lived to see the sun rise after a night centuries long.

Smiling down at her. 

“D’you think anyone’s listening?”

In the midst of all this wreckage and fighting, of this shock of how broken he may be, she smiles.  Her heart is half grim, half joyful, articulating clumsily to herself _This is a mess, a hells of a mess_

It is.  But they are still alive.  There’s still hope.  There’s always been hope.

“I do.  Somebody’s out there.”

And it’s strange, hearing herself say that and knowing it’s true.  Knowing she knows it.  The distant air is blue and ordinary, when you look past the threads of smoke and the explosions, the last few flying craft still airborne, streaking above the base.  Out there, beyond that horizon, beyond the pale edge of the atmosphere, there have to be more ships.  The Alliance is still there, somewhere, and someone has heard their message.  She knows.  The transmission went out, into the sunlight, beyond, it was heard, it was saved.

There’s wreckage on the platform.  Jyn manoeuvres carefully.  All her own injuries are aching and sore; but as best she can she is trying to cushion Cassian’s broken body and that matters more than her own cuts and bruises.  He’s in a bad way and with every lurching step they take, she’s more aware that he may not be able to carry on very long.  He’s closer to falling than ever, just minutes after he reappeared, alive despite his fall. 

It’s up to her to get him to safety.  It’s up to her to shield him from being jolted or jarred, from collapsing and losing his chance to get out of this place.

There’s still hope and she’s going to get them to it, wherever it is to be found.

She thumps her free hand clumsily on the access panel and like another miracle the lift is already there, waiting; the door slides open with a bright sound.

They shuffle inside.  Cassian is panting with every step now, his weight sagging against her body.  He slumps back against the wall of the elevator carriage with a grunt as she squints at the indicators and finds the button for the ground floor.  Her own head is starting to ring a little, all of the last hour catching up with her.  She wrings out one stinging hand and blinks to focus, and hits the button.  The carriage gives a tiny shake and starts to move, and the passage of light and shadow tells her the lift is going down. 

Cassian is watching her.  The moving light gleams on his face, gleams in his eyes.  He looks calm, suddenly.  As though there’s an end in sight, to this pain and this struggle, an end he’s been blessed to see.

And in the streaming bands of sunlight and shadow she finally sees it too; there is an end, and he’s reached it.  He’s broken.  He just looks at her.  Makes no attempt even to check his injuries.  Just looks, rapt, glad, and astonished, down at her.

_No, no, nonono, this can’t be_

It can’t be.  There is a future out there; just let them get to safety, there’s life and hope, there’s a home to welcome one another back to, and paths that lead beyond, once they live through tonight.  They’ve survived the mission; they’re saving themselves, not failing, not waiting till the strength goes from beaten broken bodies and bloodied minds.  Not waiting to die, watching the light come and go, no, nonono that can’t happen no no…

Her hand is still on his shoulder.  He feels warm to the touch, his breathing a gentle movement.  Strong and solid, it seems beyond belief that he’s so near the edge.  She notices he’s no longer trembling, and his eyes don’t leave hers; there’s a soft look on his face, that is almost a smile, very deep and small, and sacred.  A look that says _I have so much to tell you_

A glad, sad, last look.

_Oh_

_Oh, not this_

_This is too cruel, this is too much, oh no, no, no, please no, let him not look at me so, let him not say the words in that speaking look, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it, I have borne and borne and borne and I cannot bear more, not now, not this.  Now we must find the way home, the way to healing and life.  Not this.  Not this.  Not Cassian as well, broken and wordless and at peace, not this tenderness, this gladness in the face of something inescapable, I cannot bear it I cannot bear to name it, please, no, please._

_Not this_

_Do not let him die_

_Oh to scream against this, to be able to beat it with rage_

_To cry till I break, oh so cruel, so cruel_

_And lift my mouth to his and kiss those tender smiling lips and those exhausted eyes, kiss the life back into him, hold him until he’s strong again, until he can make me strong too_

_I cannot bear it, and I must._

_But I will not leave him._

The elevator comes softly to a stop, and the unprompted door sings out and slides open.  Jyn reaches out her arms to hold him again, to give what she has left to give, to bear what she must; and they stagger into the dazzling heat and the smoke and wreckage at the foot of the tower.  Out, away, facing the open sea.

For a moment it looks as though there’s sunlight on the water, and surely that is beautiful, so much beauty cannot mean their luck has gone

But

Not quite right

It isn’t the sun.

Cassian straightens a little against her, and she knows he’s seen it too.

So there were no paths into the future, after all.  No branching roads.  Just a road that ends here.

On the beach at Scarif, at the end of everything.  She had hoped, and for a time it seemed as though more than she’s ever dreamed of could come of those hopes.  But they finished the mission, the transmission was sent.  They built what they could, out of what hope they had.  And Cassian’s eyes are still smiling on hers. 

_I cannot bear it, and I must.  I want to murder something, but there’s nothing here to harm, no-one alive save the one I would wish only health and joy._

_Let me not break down and scream, let me not howl, not die in grief.  Not now.  We finished the mission, we won our fight, we’re together at the end.  There is a kind of joy in this._

“Your father would be proud of you, Jyn.”

How did he know the right thing to say?  How has he always known?  He’s smiling at her, still.

_I love you, you strange soldier, you good man.  I don’t even know which of my fathers you imagine I’m thinking of, when you say those words.  But you’re right, they would both be proud.  We’ve fulfilled their dying hopes, today._

_Oh, your smile is breaking my heart.  Let me hold you.  Let me hold you.  We did it.  Let me hold you in joy, this once._

She’ll never know how he finds the strength, but he drags himself upright and they embrace, and she knows.  It’s done.  All the fear and all the joy can be released, she can let it all go, she’s safe, her last trust not betrayed, she’s safe in his arms and he in hers.  Never alone again.  This once, this once, this once

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me. This is NOT going to be canon-compliant. There is a chapter 3, I just have to type it up.


	3. Lift off

There’s a sound; odd, small, metallic.  The entire world is erupting in limitless noise around him, a game unfolding at nightmare speed, gunfire and the high-velocity scream of ships manoeuvring, he can identify at least four different engine types all being pushed right to capacity and there’s the ground-shaking rumble of advancing AT-ACTs, and human voices shouting, screeching, yelling.  Through it all, as if marked to be more distinct somehow, this one tiny sound, the clatter as something hits the deck plating a couple of metres away.

He moves before his thoughts can and his hand closes round the object and lifts it.  It’s singing, a single long note getting higher, a fuse about to go. 

“Oh no you don’t –“

Bodhi throws the grenade with all his strength out of the open hatch. 

Is thrown himself, back, hard, by the blast.

Head ringing, vision dazzled by white.  Little darts of hurt lancing all over his face and body.  His right hand numb suddenly.

He sits up, rubs the sleeve of his overall across his face, trying to dash away the blinding glare in his eyes.

Sees dead men, white ‘trooper armour and sand-brown and stark nightmare black, dirty rebel camo wear and bright flight suits, scattered across the sand, among the tipped and blasted storage crates.  Sees the connector cable has been torn in two, he’d got the signal through just in time, no chance now to send another.

Sees Stordan Tonc dragging himself up from under the ramp, crawling into the shuttle, blood coming from his mouth, swearing on every breath.

One, two more men appear out of the smoke,  retreating towards LP9 and the safety of the ship.  A huge shadow looming beyond. 

There’s an AT-ACT almost on them.

No time, no chance to wonder; just shout. “Get in, get inside!  We can’t wait anymore.  Get in, shut the hatch, come on!”

Strange echoing quality to the sound; and strange too to hear this certainty in his own voice, this tone of command.  Giving orders.  Nothing he’s ever known before.

Something hurts, the numbed hand starting to sting like he took a knife to it; but Force alive, no time to think about that, he has work to do. 

There are two men helping the wounded Tonc; the bearded guy from his own team ( _his team?  Force, what?_ -) and someone he’s seen before but who – _who_ – and the question “Who’re you?” that comes out unprompted gets the baffling answer “Private Sorrel Green, sir.”

\- which really begs the question _Who the fuck_

\- except that Private Sorrel Green looks vaguely dimly familiar and now he thinks about it, was at that mess of a Council meeting, standing quite near him, one of the hundreds of watching faces –

\- so how the krif did he get here? – but -

“Med-kit in there,” he says, shaking the bafflement away because _irrelevant thoughts, irrelevant_ ; gesturing to one of the lockers.  “No, not me –“ as Green moves towards him “Tonc, help Tonc, I’m good.  I’m getting us airborne.”

Why anyone would think to treat his cuts and bruises before Tonc’s very obvious and massive blaster burns he has no idea and there really isn’t the time; and Bodhi shoves that thought aside as well, his brain is all stowed ideas and re-routed processes, it’s like the inside of a router these days, and he grabs the companionway ladder and swings himself up, noticing again how his right arm aches and his hand stings as though

_Oh.  Right._

_No wonder it hurts.  No pinky anymore and only half a ring finger. **Krif.**_

_But good news, because two still whole, and the thumb.  Opposable thumb, wonderful thing I remember studying that in school.  I can still grip things, right, cool._

The blast seems to have cauterised the stumps, since he’s hardly bleeding at all.  Far more blood from the slashes and grazes and little flayed places where the coverall has been ripped, on his arms and face.

_And if you don’t think about any of that you’re the better able to fly so just don’t._

He’s slid into the pilot seat on muscle memory alone and is flipping switches, keying launch codes.  The engine, left idling as instructed, just ticking over; it roars into life now and he thumps the lever for the landing gear into the take-off position and engages the wing controls. 

And the wing-mounted guns.  Laser cannon, useful things. 

The beard appears, at his shoulder, shouting; why is he shouting?  Mefran, that was the man’s name – Mefran shouting “What are you doing?  The Captain told us to wait!”

Bodhi hears his own voice, again, it’s odd how echo-y it sounds still, it’s a good five minutes after that explosion isn’t it? – his own voice saying “They’ve made us, they know we’re not Empire.  Not waiting to get killed just because orders.”  And when did he ever become a man who would say, would think, a thing like that? “Gonna pick up as many as I can and get us out of here.”

It hurts to use the weapons controls but he fires a long, rattling round into a group of Stormtroopers running out of the bunker.  Blat blat blat.  **_Congratulations._**   **_You’re a rebel now._**  

Did the droid make it?  Will any of them make it?

Up to him to find out.  Up to him to fly.

“Get below, Mefran, get ready, when I drop the hatch I need you and thingummy to grab anyone of our people you see, d’you hear me?  Just grab anyone.  Okay.  Lifting off.”

More din, the engines roaring, shaking, and _Rogue One_ lifts into the smoke-filled air, bucking in the turbulence, firefights and explosions on all sides.  The walking monster ahead opens fire but he steers past it to port and shoots out the tensor field generator on one knee joint and leaves it crippled in his wake.  Locks the fore-wings for greater stability; takes them veering through a belt of palm trees and out towards the neighbouring landing pad, the next set of transport bunkers.  It’s astonishing how easy it is, to fly and fire and keep watch on the beach.  Figures here and there down below, rebels, ‘troopers, running, shooting.  He sweeps cannon fire through another line of the enemy and that too is astonishingly easy now, shoot, shoot, blat blat blat

_Congratulations, you’re a rebel now_

_Congratulations, you’re a rebel now_

Where are they where are his people his team anyone where?

Baze.  Unmistakable.  On his knees.  Still firing.  A desert lion, caught in the open, fights till it dies.  Further back, sprawled on the sand, Chirrut; further back still, a prone figure in rebel camouflage gear, and another hunched in a crater in the sand, still firing. 

Activate landing sequence and open the hatch.  Yell.

“Get them!  Get them inside!”

No idea if two of the four he can see are even alive.  Mefran and Green running out, pulling wounded men, maybe dead men; Baze staggering to his feet, the guy in the crater stumbling forward, another familiar face, one of his own crew this time, Sefla, was that the name?

Bodhi covers them, raking the enemy with cannon fire ( _they are the enemy, yes, I can say it; they are the **enemy!)**_ astonished again and again because _I was never this man, I have killed so many times now and I was never this man but now I am;_ and there’s a yell of “Clear!” from below; he shouts

“Lifting-off, brace yourselves!”

He flies, searches, watches, shoots; makes another landing, another pick-up; sees Green and Mefran and Sefla helping two more rebel crewmen and a downed pilot still trailing her parachute.  Wonders with a small stunned voice of calm deep inside if there’s time to get anyone else.

Sees the white moon shape of the battle station in the sky.  No, there’s no time. 

_Fuck they’re gonna fire they’re gonna fire_

_Got to get enough lift, get above the blast wave, it’ll raise steam as well as rock this time_

_Maybe they won’t fire maybe they won’t_

_That thing is monstrous._

_Truly I never knew till now how huge._

_This is NiJedha over again, o my home my home my life._

Green light, green fire and lightning, _this is what it looks like the moment they decide and destroy.  They fired, they fired, Oh Force Force be with me turn this ship around get out of here get out_

_Get out no – no -_

_There_

_There on the beach there_

_Fallen but upright I know those figures I know their movement the incline of their heads to one another I know them I know them_

_No, run, run, save the ship save the ones you already have save yourself there’s no time there’s no time we have no time only there they are there they are I cannot leave them_

**_You’re our only way out of here._ **

He’s swinging the shuttle back down even as his nerves scream at him to run run run; swinging groundwards, dropping through air that shakes towards a surface that will erupt spill break apart any moment, toward blinding light boiling sea steam and fire

_\- and this is the death we all escaped once_

_\- maybe this time too_

_\- or maybe it will catch us catch me maybe it already has_

Yet even now, even all this, is still so astonishingly easy.  His torn hands flying as though flight is all that he is.

_Just keep flying, pilot._

_And oh look, the half-finger has begun to bleed again.  Blot the blood on your sleeve, keep flying, bring her in, we can hover for maybe ten secs on lateral thrusters before the turbulence gets too much to_

“Stand by!  When the ramp opens _grab them_!  Get them on board, I can only manage one pass, **_grab them!”_**

One pass.  Precision low-altitude flying at very low speed in severe atmospheric turbulence.  Challenging.  _Sweet Force alive keep her flying this ugly bird of mine._   Adjust, manoeuvre, keep her steady; closer, closer, hatch open ramp down; a huge jolt to the undercarriage and _oh fuck fuck did I just bump the ground? and that’s quite a buffeting we’re taking but I can keep her stable keep her stable a whole universe of noise roaring a din so vast_

\- so vast it’s almost silence but

-not silence overwhelming violence, noise, light, go, go go!

_No idea if we got them but that blast wave is too big and too close I’m gonna run now I’m gonna run_

\- run

\- run

It’s easy you know how to do this

Put her into a climb

Can I get enough lift

Enough lift?

Can I?

\- outrun it

\- run with it

\- run on it float on it can I get enough lift

\- lift

- _lift_

\- **_lift_**

How K-2SO would have relished chanting the odds now, looks like I’ll never hear that voice again

**_Lift!_ **

The viewscreen is almost a white-out, vision blinded by roiling light and the whole ship is vibrating as they rise, rise, rise

 - and break atmo

There’s another battle.  Out here.  Flares of fire in the black.  The nightmare moon-hull of the Death Star, white, huge.  Ships firing on one another or drifting incapacitated, wreckage strewn, a debris field lit by single fighters shafting by.  Bodhi spares it a bare glance and does the only thing he can; reverses the last set of jump coordinates and punches it.

Out.

Blue.

_Made it._

_We made it._

He’s shaking, and it’s a time before he realises it is time, it’s normal time again, he’s no longer this flowing unceasing fusion of terror and absolute ease, he’s just regular Bodhi again, just conscious struggling thought and wondering, and he’s panting wildly to catch his breath.  He checks his ruined hand and realises there’s also blood soaking the whole of the front of his coveralls.  From the spread and spatter pattern it looks to be coming from a head wound he didn’t even know he had.

No wonder everything hurts.

Down below a jammer of voices, someone shouting “Give me that hypospray quick!” and someone “Fuck fuck fuck” and someone else screaming.  A lot of pain down there, a lot of shock.

Strangely, there’s sand sifting in the air, and _we seem to have shipped out quite a bit of beach as well as please please a bunch of living people_

_Please, please, please_

_Fuck. **Everything** hurts._

The ship is stable in the hyperspace lane.  _For better or worse, we’re on our way._

He fumbles for the seatbelt and remembers he never did strap in; heaves himself clumsily out of the seat, lurching, giddy.  _Opposite of hypoxia, what is that?  Hyperoxia?  You can black out from overbreathing, pilot, you know that._

Move.  The companionway, the hatch.  Lean over, look down.  “Hey?” 

People, living bodies, at least some of them up and moving.  Someone still cursing, someone groaning.  Unsteady broken speech, several voices talking at once.  At least four people moving about, a couple sitting or crouching, four or five more flat on the deck. 

His voice is a rag of sound. “How many?  Who? –“

There’s the loud plastic _snap_ of a first-aid patch being ripped open, and a dim, deep background murmur that is a voice praying, very soft, repeating _I am one with the Force and the Force is with me_.  Over and over, almost tenderly.

“How many?  Somebody, anybody, Mefran?  Green, are you there?”

He feels so dizzy, and that messed-up hand is really hurting like a bitch now.

A white, white face peers up at him.  That boy from LP9.  Sorrel Green.  “Sir…”

 _Sir?_   “How many aboard?”

A pause; the boy stares around.  “I count – eleven down here.  No, sorry, twelve.  Twelve including me, sir.”

“Living?” _Please, please, please_

“I think so, yes, sir.  Three in a bad way, need a medic but they’re stable for now; four more banged-up but conscious; me and the others just scratches.”  He has very dark eyes, this pale, pale boy.  “That was amazing flying, sir.”  There’s a rumble behind him and he glances back, looks up again.  “The Lieutenant says Thank you, sir.  And the – the big guy, with the cannon.  Says Well done.  The Force is with you, he says.  Sir?  Are you okay?”

_I think I may be going to faint._

It’s another unsteady giddy moment before he realises he’s no longer standing and leaning to look into the hold; he’s sat down hard on the flight deck because his knees aren’t working and his legs won’t support him.  Twelve below including Green _.  I took off with three other guys then we got – Baze, Chirrut, Lt Sefla, one more with them, might have been Sgt Melshi? that’s another four - and we got three off the beach touch-down, that leaves two to make twelve.  Which means we got Jyn and Cassian as well._

_Twelve.  Thirteen counting me.  The number of good fortune._

_I got them.  I got them all._

The groaning and cursing and muttered talk have resumed, below, and the soft murmuring prayers.  Green is still staring with his wide shocked eyes; the kid has climbed up the first few rungs of the companionway to check on him. 

“Sir?”

“Is there any more, any more bacta, in that med-pack?” Bodhi’s voice says.  It still has an echo-y sound.  “I got a bit – a bit hit, back there.”

Thump, thump, thump as the boy goes down; voices, and a slightly less regular thump-thump as someone else clambers up.  A med-kit is heaved up and dumped on the deck beside him.  He closes his eyes in relief at the sight.  There’s a comforting background engine noise, all systems running smoothly.  A continuing thump-thump as the lame person climbs the remaining rungs. 

A familiar voice says his name.  He cracks an eye open wearily. 

Jyn looks pretty beaten-up. 

But then, he probably does, too.

She scrambles clumsily through the hatchway –

Crouches beside him -

Puts a hand on his bloody sleeve.

Smiles. 

That can only mean one thing s _urely, surely, please_

Bodhi feels his lips shape their own answering smile, feels his brain fumble around hope, around words. “We – did it?”

“We did it,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of course, Bodhi.


End file.
